Blood of the VirginPublisher and author Sammy Harkham’s graphic novel is as much a nod to 1970s Hollywood cinema as it is a delightfully sentimental mural. A masterful mix of genres.
For more than a decade, Sammy Harham has been weaving a web in the world of American comics as editor of an important series. Kramer’s ergot and as a screenwriter and illustrator of psychological, often tragicomic stories. Blood of the Virginhas been serialized in his comics for a long time Death matchis an ambitious graphic novel about the adventures of a (mis)married man, and a little unhappy, trying to find a place in Los Angeles and the film industry.
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What was the original idea? Blood of the Virgin ?
I thought about my parents. My father is an Iraqi immigrant and my mother is a New Zealand farmer. I was interested in how they lived in their relationship, especially at the beginning of their marriage. I spent my life trying to understand them… When the book was finished, I realized that I had used elements from their lives, such as the fact that my father was an immigrant from the Middle East. This helped me to give the main character some marginal lines. I also had in mind the film industry and my city, Los Angeles. I wanted to explore these three themes, see what happens when you mix them.
How did you start painting?
I am not a born designer, I always start with a story, a narrative. When I was a teenager, my parents moved to Sydney, a city where I had no friends. That gave me time and I designed posters for concerts. I loved the music of the mid-1990s bands like Slint, Turtle, Will Oldham. Through them I discovered graphic design and political thought. Comics were part of this counterculture. I realized then that what comics do better than any other medium is to establish a direct connection between the author’s mind, his hand and the drive’s gaze. It is unique and exciting when it is finished.
THE: relationships and couples at the center of your work are…
Every cartoonist has their own focus, and mine is the relationships I don’t know that interest me. I married very young, had children soon, and as a reader, I was inexorably drawn to romance stories. Like Bergman’s films, which all revolve around the same thing, yet are infinitely rich.
Your drawing often produces a distinct European line. Who are your favorite authors?
Frankin, Morris or Hergé in his prime before his sets got tougher. I try to keep a flexible line like them. I’m not interested in realism so much as in invoking the reader’s memory of the painting. The way an object is represented must be able to generate the noise that this object produces. The work should not be seen, it should be simplified so that the drawing is easy to see, even if it required great pain. I am trying to move towards fluidity.
Source: Le Figaro
